


Climb the tallest tree

by Petra



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M, Orgasm Denial, Recursive Tragedy, Romance, kink bingo, linked drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-15
Updated: 2010-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:56:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gene has his reasons for moving north again, though he can't name them until he looks them in the face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Climb the tallest tree

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Ashes to Ashes 3x08/the universe as a whole.
> 
> Orgasm denial/control for Kink Bingo. Recursion. Thanks to [](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**thatyourefuse**](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/), [](http://d-generate-girl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**d_generate_girl**](http://d-generate-girl.dreamwidth.org/), and [](http://katarik.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**katarik**](http://katarik.dreamwidth.org/) for pre-reading.

  
Gene transfers north in 1987. He tells everyone in London that he's going home and tells everyone at home he's tired of the ruddy rotten South.

They're both true and both lies. There's another reason, somewhere, but he can't name it.

Litton's still there, fighting the good fight like the rat bastard he is. Jackie Queen's son is brown-haired and looks like her husband.

He doesn't work it out until 1988, when he's looking over the new batch of plods: fresh-faced stupid boys, most of them.

Even then, he doesn't know exactly, but there's something about that PC Tyler.

*

CID doesn't deal with the plods much except when they've something to report. But PC Tyler's in and out all the time, bringing in information that turns out useful as like as not.

Gene collars him the fifth time he's in that week--Tuesday--and drags him into the office, gives him a glass of scotch. "You keep hanging around here and we'll have to promote you so your super knows where to find you."

Tyler's eyes are wide, determined. Familiar. "I'd like that, Guv. If you think I've earned it."

"Not yet," Gene says. "Focus on the details."

"Yes, Guv."

*

That's his first mistake--his first right step--because Tyler takes it as encouragement, starts hanging around CID even more. Follows them down to the pub like a lost puppy and when the lads scowl, he stands his round.

That makes him friends and flat broke for the week, if Gene's any judge.

He crowds the lad into a corner. "Didn't have to do that."

"I know, but everyone else does."

"You're not CID yet."

Tyler sighs. "I know that, too."

Gene frowns. "You come round to mine tomorrow, half six, and I'll see you get dinner."

"Guv?"

"Be there."

*

Tyler eats like he hasn't seen food all day. The canteen know better than to give credit to PCs his age, or they'd eat the place down to nothing and suck the bones. He doesn't even complain that Gene can't cook worth a damn.

"Why'd you invite me over--Guv?" he asks, when he's not pale as a ghost.

"Don't want you fainting on the beat, do I?" Gene shrugs and clears the table.

"Let me," Tyler says.

Their hands knock together over a plate, and Gene stares at him.

Remembers for a second.

"Back in a minute." He flees.

*

It's three weeks before he says anything to PC Tyler but, "Good work," and "Get back to your streets, lad, they need you."

He knows--he knows Tyler's important. Knows he's beautiful, in a tidy way. Knows what he looks like with his kit off, and that's no fault of the boy's, just a dream or the like. Knows he's going to be a damn good copper, and whatever Gene wants from him, it's got to stay out of the way of all that.

He can't run a station with just CID.

Tyler's too ambitious to walk a beat forever.

*

Tyler's in his office at six, an indecent hour, a bottle in his hand that's half his pay. The department's dark and empty. Gene's been at his desk for an hour, working an abduction. "I wanted to apologize," Tyler says. "For whatever happened."

Gene glowers at him. He doesn't back down.

He wouldn't.

"You didn't do a damn thing. Take that back and tell them you wanted swill."

Tyler opens it and takes a swig--a cruel thing to do to a scotch near twice his age--then holds the bottle out, mouth wet, panting. "It's for you," he says.

*

He dreams of PC Tyler that night, for months, his mouth on Gene's cock like it was made to be there, his long legs spread across his bed. In his dreams, his fantasies, he knows just how the lad would sound begging to be fucked, how fast bruises would rise on his fair skin, how he would writhe and fight if Gene held him down and made him wait as long as either of them could bear.

It feels like a set of impossible truths he's half-forgot.

Gene tries not to think of Tyler naked except when he tosses off.

*

He spends a great deal of the next year carefully not touching PC Tyler.

The only time he lets himself, he's forgot why he shouldn't, and it's to shake the man's hand and call him a detective constable.

That reminds him again of lips wet with scotch, of the kiss he was far too honorable to take, for all the lad was looking at him. He could've had the world. It reminds him of his dreams, Tyler's voice saying his name desperate, rough, begging him.

Gene congratulates him and gets away from him as fast as he can, wishing--no.

*

DI Johnson goes missing on 4 August, 1992.

Everyone else in CID--in the station--takes his note saying he'd seen too much and had to do himself in as gospel, and there's talk of dredging the canal, but it doesn't happen. Johnson was a bit of a loose cannon, and no one's surprised to see him go.

Except Tyler.

"Where is he, Guv?" he asks Gene.

It's gone midnight. They're both drunk, still at work.

There's only one answer: "Where you went."

Tyler frowns at him. "I'm right here."

Gene sighs. Pats his knee. "I know, Sam. I know."

*

A month later, everyone but Tyler's forgot Johnson even existed, save for the missing person file.

Tyler's after Gene again, terrier that he is. "I still don't believe he killed himself, Guv."

"Then believe he had some other bloody reason for wanting to leave without being followed." Gene smacks him with the file.

Tyler's eyes narrow.

He doesn't hit Tyler half enough.

"What reason, then?"

"How the hell should I know? I'm not a psychological profiler."

Tyler laughs. "'course not. But you're the best."

"Ta very much, but I can't explain Johnson. He was mental."

"All right, Guv." For now.

*

The kiss is a mistake he's seen coming for years.

Tyler's mouth--Sam's mouth--tastes of scotch. He moans like he always did, open and trusting.

"Fuck it," Gene says, and drags him staggering back to the car, all knees and eagerness.

It's been years since he had a man in his mouth, shaking, persistent, bitter, groaning his name and hips jerking when Gene sucks him just so.

"Christ," Sam says, and laughs, too high, too nervous. "I can't believe you really--"

Gene wipes his mouth and can't believe it either. "Turnabout's fair play, Sammy."

"God, of course. Please."

*

Sometimes life is perfect.

Sometimes they catch the bad guys.

Sometimes Sam smiles at him and they have to find a place, now, with no windows and a door that locks.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, Gene thinks Sam shouldn't be there, warm and breathing next to him. He usually manages to get his arms round Sam without waking him up too much, close enough to feel his heart beating and know he's real.

By morning, he puts those nights down to the lingering fear that someone will say something about their ill-kept secret and separate them.

Sometimes.

*

Sam's the youngest DS they've had in the division for twenty years.

Gene isn't sure that no one's going to protest the promotion until Sam's holding it in his hand, and even then he doesn't believe it. Someone has to know there's something odd.

It means Sam's on the streets more, and that helps. The more time they spend together, the easier it is to believe Sam will be there every time he turns around.

Gene doesn't have that problem with his DI, or with half the DCs. He shouldn't have that problem with his--Sam, but there it is.

*

"You have a huge house," Sam says, defiant, naked. "Tell everyone you're letting me a room and to hell with the ones who question it."

Gene hesitates. It isn't déjà vu--he doesn't hold with that French shit--but he's said no to that before. This time he says, "All right," and Sam smiles like a sunrise.

It's taken that long for Gene to call it making love, what they do next in his wide bed that's been empty but for him since God knows when. It's full now.

Sam's right, anyway. To hell with anyone who minds their business.

*

"Your DS Tyler's a competent kid," Litton says.

Gene clenches his hands into fists, then lets them go. "You can't have him, so don't you try it."

"Would I do that to you, Genie?" Litton pours himself a full measure of Gene's scotch. "He seems familiar, that's all."

"He's been round the department for years. 'course he does."

Litton frowns, then shakes his head, letting it go. "If he ever decides he wants to try something new--"

"Sod off," Gene says, but he doesn't hit Litton for it.

"And your DI, well."

Gene shrugs. "Young's all right. Bit funny."

*

"Tell me." Gene squeezes his fingers tight round the base of Sam's cock. "Say it, if you ever want to come again."

Sam groans and pulls at the handcuffs, plush girly things that don't chafe, not real ones. "God, you're a bastard." His voice is rough.

"Wrong answer." Gene licks him, mouth full of the taste of him already. Sam wails and arches off the bed.

"Please--fuck, Gene--fine, fine. I'm yours, you know that--damn you, all yours. Let me come, please, please--"

"All mine." Gene swallows him down, as grateful as Sam is that it's true.

*

When Young goes, it's a transfer, or that's on the paperwork. Gene knows it's not so, and doesn't know how he knows.

"Do you ever think about moving somewhere else?" Sam asks that night, tracing patterns on Gene's chest with his fingers.

"After those years in bloody London? Not on your life." Gene takes his hand and runs his thumb over the place a ring would fit if Sam was a girl. His fingers are unmarked. He could leave tomorrow and no one but Gene would know that something had broken. "Do you?"

"No. I'm not going anywhere without you."

*

He hates begging Sam as much as he loves it when Sam begs him, but it comes out the next time he's teasing Sam into a sweaty mess. "Don't leave me," in among the normal "Look at you, wriggling like a tart," and all.

"What?" Sam says, pupils wide and face slack. Three seconds ago he was thinking of nothing more than the fingers in his arse, Gene would swear to that. "What's wrong?"

Gene twists his fingers, tries to get Sam's quick mind back where it belongs: wailing, not thinking. "Nothing."

"Fuck--you're sure?"

"Yes. You ready?"

"God, yes."

*

Litton goes, no goodbye, no seeing-off party, just goes. If he'd ever been Gene's friend, or properly his colleague, it would hurt, having him disappear without so much as a forwarding address.

"You all right?" Sam asks.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Sam shrugs. "You've known Litton for a long time."

Gene can't think how long, come to that. "Doesn't mean I liked him."

Sam looks round the dark, empty office and touches his shoulder. "If you ever decide to up and leave--"

"I won't." Gene takes his hand, squeezes too tightly. "I won't leave you."

Sam smiles. "Good. Don't."

*

"What the fuck's going on here?" a man shouts, angry and confused. His face is as red as his hair.

The new DS, that is, O'Mara or some such, and three days late besides.

All of CID is watching him, watching Sam extend his hand. "I'm DI Tyler," he says, calm in the face of the man's blustering.

"You're bloody not. I'm DCI here, and I haven't known any detective named Tyler for years."

Everyone murmurs, papers ruffle. Gene opens the door of his office. "DS O'Mara," he says.

"I am not!" O'Mara shouts.

"A word in your shell-like, pal."


End file.
